


A Bitter Truth

by didsomeonesayventus



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: ((I also don't know what to tag this as)), ((feel free to suggest)), ((yet another Good!Xeha fic BITE ME)), Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-27
Updated: 2016-08-27
Packaged: 2018-08-11 09:20:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7885411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/didsomeonesayventus/pseuds/didsomeonesayventus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Xehanort imagined meeting Namine, this was not what he expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Bitter Truth

Xehanort had heard impressive things of Namine from his ex-comrades. To meet her was almost a let down. She wasn’t magnificent or awe inspiring from the moment you saw her, she wasn’t blatantly powerful and dripping with the chains of memories dripping over her arms, ready to be broken and molded at a moment’s notice, she wasn’t even full of presence.

Namine wasn’t a witch: she was a ghost. A little girl drawing in the corner.

There wasn’t much for conversation starters between them. She drawed. He stared.

“We... lost track of you after Castle Oblivion.” He said, awkwardly, hesitantly.

The stick of color in her hand stilled. Everything about her now seemed still so out of touch, so out of place as if she was a hastily glued on cutout to the picture. Her sketchbook fell to her lap as her hands gently folded themselves over the picture; he caught a glimpse of familiar shapes, but nothing more.

“Did you?”

Her voice was paper thin, brittle, small, shy, but now he could sense the power lying in wait. A small sense of confidence and calmness as if she were a parent who knew vast amounts more than the child he was. She knew. He did not. He wasn’t used to that.

“I think... I had plans to meet with Xemnas... the moment they brought you out of that place,” he continued, or at least tried to, “and then you slipped out of their grasp and never returned.”

So many fanciful ideas about the witch who could rewrite reality itself sheerly through memory had filled his head in anticipation of that meeting that never was, and she was pale in comparison to every one. Underwhelming. Quiet. No wonder they had so easily held her, even for such a short time.

“Mmmm... I don’t know if they ever intended to let me leave Castle Oblivion.”

A waiver. Something fragile appeared.

“I don’t know either. It was speculation.”

Silence. The rough grind of paper and pencil filled the gap.

“Well, you’re meeting me now. I think that counts for something.”

He shrugged. It seemed everyone said that. That they didn’t properly know him in the Realm of Sleep (or what had passed for it) and that actually knowing him and knowing why he acted that way and knowing he was trying to change that now “counted for something”. Counted for what? Brownie points?

He turned his head when she said, “You’re different.”

She still refused to meet his gaze, her lips were pursed. He glanced down at her growing portrait of him. She’d chosen a very warm sort of yellow for the rough shape he took to be his eyes, and his hair had been colored with lavender and electric blue.

“You have grey.” He scoffed softly. He’d seen her draw Xemnas, Ansem, his elder self, and she had always used grey, always used a yellow so cold it could have been sliding into green.

“You’re different.” She stated it again, smoothing out rougher patches of color. “You embraced what you become as destiny, and now you’re trying to defy it.”

“Because it makes no sense.” Xehanort said. “Why seek a war that destroys everything for the sake of one answer you may not even be able to see? Why devote so much of your time, your planning, all this for an apocalypse that very much includes yourself?”

She smiled and continued rendering the piece in her hands, “See? You’re not from a point of no return: you’re from the start, and you have time turn back and deny what has been called fate.”

Namine finally lifted her head and offered him her full smile, “And you are. I’m proud of you.”

“You just met me.” He replied.

Her smile vanished, flickering away. “Yes, that’s true.” She flipped a page, sketching far faster now than the languid pace she had been taking. Creating an image, telling him a story, “But I know what you’ve done, Xehanort.”

She knew memories, but she didn’t know him.

“Show me then. What do you know?” It was a facetious challenge, a defensive scoff. Rhetorical in every intention.

Namine paused. She pressed the pencil to her lips in thought. She then slowly flipped to a new page and began drawing. “Well... Once upon a time...”

Xehanort saw the whole room fading to white. Just him. Just her. He was about to say something when she lifted her hand. No sketchbook. “This is an illusion,” she digressed to explain, “Just watch and listen, and you’ll understand.”

She held out her hand with a new pencil, one pure white that shimmered gold. She pressed it into the void, and the scene painted itself. “You had a friend.” A young man, black hair, lighter skin than his but still tanned and kissed by the sun. “And you both grew and prospered and learned the ways of the Keyblade.”

He saw himself pouring over books, and slowly he became more and more withdrawn.The other boy- this “friend” -began arguing with him. Then he was packing. The other was begging.

“You searched and searched for answers until you couldn't find anything else, and when your friend inherited, you left to find more.” She looked at him, “Never satisfied with just one answer, you sought everything.”

“Alright, I understand.” Xehanort said, expecting it to end there. Everything to fade back in, she would draw, he would leave.

“And in search of everything, you left behind everything, Xehanort.”

She continued the illusion, let it play out, let him watch as he grew and changed, as the spark in his eyes became sharp and callous.

“... That’s enough.”

“Your heart began forgetting.” She continued, “Forgetting until it could not understand nor feel empathy.”

Ventus. A familiar face years younger and carved with fear and anguish. Echoes of a voice, echoes of protest.

“Namine, with all due respect I said that is enough.” He hissed at her.

“Do you really understand, Xehanort?” She asked.

He couldn’t reply, watching the boy fall, struck down by his own hand. It hurt him, seeing that. Seeing the light die in those blue eyes, seeing him cave in.

“It’s enough to understand.” He said as he averted his gaze.

“And this is just the start.” She replied in simple truth, “Ventus was only the first of many.”

More and more began appearing, instances where everything sensible was abandoned, where even the barest touch of his influence sent whole lives into chaos. It was almost comical, how horrible it all was, how unimaginably ruinous his influence was. But there, at the center of it all, those young, blue eyes becoming completely lifeless, a body falling still, a _child_ all but _murdered_ by _him_ -

“NAMINE THIS IS ENOUGH!”

With a swipe of his hand the room returned. She was drawing; pained and painted figures across the whole page, seeking solace, shrinking from the sight of him. He was panting; eyes stinging, blood boiling, trembling to hold back the disgust and anger.

This wasn’t him. He couldn’t be that horrible, that devoted to making others suffer just for one answer.

She shrank back, turning her head so that her hair shielded her gaze from him. “... My apologies. I went too far.”

“You did.” He hissed at her, “And for what? Propaganda to make sure I don’t turn traitor on you, too?!”

Her head snapped up, “N-no I-”

“I know that the Master you all face is cruel and villainous, but there are lines I would never cross-”

“Xeha-”

“What you just showed me is not what I will do! And how could you know any truth of it if you weren’t there?!” He couldn’t be like that. He wasn’t like that. He had called himself straight out of a children’s tale from everything he had heard, but he didn’t think the title was that apt, that his heart had really grown that corrupted. I-it was impossible. People had nuances, even darkness had light and there were morals to guide every footstep.

“What I showed you was the truth-”

“What people _remembered_!” He jabbed a finger at her, “For all we know he was asking for it-”

“Was anyone in there asking for anything?!” Namine’s voice finally raised to meet his in a desperate cry, “Do you think people ask for this?”

He fell silent.

“Don’t fill my head with those lies again.” He finally hissed.

He turned to leave.

A page turned.

A tear fell.

**Author's Note:**

> little drabble I wrote up for my RP blog where Good!Young Xehanort is _T H R I V I N G_


End file.
